Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

March 1, 2011

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10100 Pembroke Pines Blvd.
Pembroke Pines, FL 33206

RE: “bile and vitriol” – Are there any limits to civil discourse and rational discussion? But wait. There’s more: A look at a classic example of a guilt free apology. I guess there’s no sense in being a half-assed modern American Liberal.

My dear Congresswoman,

“You are fucking dead”

Since a duly elected state representative, Gordon Hintz [D-WI] said that to another duly elected state Representative, Michelle Litjens [R-WI] I assume it is OK to quote him.

After Congresswoman Gabriella Giffords was shot you saw fit to lecture the country on “bile and vitriol” and how they “have been tearing us apart at the seams”. The inference was that Congresswoman Giffords was shot by people loyal to Sarah Palin and dependent on Rush Limbaugh for their marching orders. Further, the climate of hate that is conducive to assassination both of character and of person was driven by the renascent “vast Right-Wing conspiracy” and its predilection towards rhetoric, containing both “bile and vitriol”, or so you said.

[Full disclosure requires me to tell you that I was a founding member of the above named conspiracy. No dues, no meetings, no lock step beliefs, but rather a knowledge and an appreciation of the “Permanent Things”, gifts not from any government, gifts that are ours at birth, “gifts from beyond the stars”. My only “assignment” was to picket the White House in the summer of 1999. Wearing my “vR-Wc” cap I held my granddaughter in one arm and used the other to shake my fist and yell “Come out you son of a bitch! We have the place surrounded!”]

It turned out that the shooter was neither ideologically dependent on Joe the Plumber nor was he on Darth Cheney’s secret hit squad. He had, as I mentioned in my letter of 1/16/11, “snakes for brains”.

Since your resume proudly proclaims that you have 2 degrees in Political Science, an accomplishment that would require more than a modicum of knowledge of things Greek – that’s where it all started, no? – you should understand my reason for dropping the promiscuous use of the word Rhetoric. Rhetoric is 1/3rd of the Trivium and, as such, a capstone in Western Civilization. I will use the term Sophistry in its place.

Speaking of Sophistry, Representative Hintz says “I apologized when I learned that my words may have been taken personally by someone”. He says that it is OK to say “You are fucking dead” as long as nobody takes it the wrong way. I’ll leave it to better etymologists than I am to parse that into acceptability. For example, would it be OK to say it in church? To a teacher? To a mailman? To the IRS? To the guy grabbing your scrotum at the airport? To a Judge? To a homeless beggar? To a DMV clerk?

The “no such thing as a bad boy” school of social conduct, the one that allows modern American Liberals to excuse anything that they do or say, encourages the belief that something is wrong only if someone else is offended by it. Once someone says that it is offensive an apology applicable only to that particular person applies.

Some things are wrong in their essence. Malum per se, if you will. Other things are wrong in their usage. Malum prohibitum.

If “You are fucking dead” is acceptable until someone says it is personally offensive I guess it is permissible to say, inter alia, “Ginny gangster, “WOG terrorist”, “Jew bastard”, “drunken Irishman”, “Quebecois merde”, “lazy dreaded ‘N’ word”, “tight assed Presbyterian”, “greasy Mexican” – This sounds like fun! I guess I shouldn’t leave out the Slopes, The Gomers, the Winkies, and the Dot Heads. I’ll give them a chance to be offended.

Logically, every time you meet a German it would be OK to call him a “Nazi bastard”, right? I could say it until somebody named Dieter objects. I apologize to him but wink, wink Klaus and Franz are “Nazi bastards”, right?

When Representative Hintz says he’s sorry for saying “You are fucking dead”, not because it was wrong per se but rather because Representative Litjens found it offensive, he was the poster boy, the paradigmatic template if you will, for a school of political thought, modern American Liberalism, that is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Because there are no standards there are no consequences for breaching the rules of conduct expected of a gentleman. I have but one thing to say about that:

THAT AIN’T FUCKING RIGHT!





Kevin Smith